Title: Huntsman's Honor
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Lucius, mentions of Lucius/Narcissa
Content Notes: Angst, not epilogue-compliant, ritual magic, violence, gore, animal harm
Wordcount: This part 3500
Rating: R
Summary: Harry has long wanted to perform a ritual that might let him bring Sirius back through the Veil, but he needed help to both gather the ingredients and cast the ritual itself. And accepting that that help could come from Lucius Malfoy took him even longer.
Author's Notes: This is another of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is in response to a request by nia_kantorka, who asked for Harry/Lucius with the prompt of Harry always wanted to try that ritual. Now he's got the partner(s) to actually do so. There will be three parts total.

Huntsman's Honor

Harry braced himself. It felt halfway silly to do so when he'd come this far and actually through the gates of Malfoy Manor, but he still had to do it.

He knocked.

There was a long silence, although Harry had waited before the gates long enough that he'd thought the house-elves were telling Malfoy he was here. Then the door swung open, a huge stone portal that creaked as if it was made of wood, and Lucius Malfoy studied him in silence before he nodded.

"Mr. Potter. You might as well come inside."

Harry nodded and did just that, keeping his back straight and his stare the same, so that he looked slightly past Malfoy as the man folded his arms and studied him. Frankly, he had given up a lot of his pride already to reach this point. If Malfoy wouldn't agree to help him, Harry would find someone else, but he refused to be embarrassed no matter what the requirements of the ritual.

"Your letter said that you had a sensitive subject to discuss with me. Is it about Draco?"

Harry blinked and turned to look Malfoy in the face. He could see how the man might have thought that. "No. Or about your wife, or your term in Azkaban, either."

Malfoy's shoulders hunched a little, as if he was waiting for wings to grow out of them. "Narcissa is no longer my wife."

Harry had been aware of that, abstractly, although the endless speculation in the paper over the Malfoy separation hadn't included any concrete reasons. On the other hand, he wouldn't have approached a married man for help with this particular ritual. "All right. But it's not about that, or your family legacy. It's about a ritual that you might be willing to help me with, one that's considered Dark Arts."

There was a long pause that made Harry feel as if the snow outside had settled on him and frozen him. Malfoy's eyes, which seemed somewhere between grey and ice, surveyed him, and then Malfoy turned and walked through a door that led into what looked like a wide room covered with bookshelves.

Deciding it was the best invitation he was going to get, Harry followed.

Lucius Malfoy looked at the arrogant young man sitting in the huge wingback chair across from him, and wondered.

Well, no. "Arrogant" was more a judgment than a reality. Harry Potter had changed, in the years since the war. He'd withdrawn more and more from society. He hadn't married the Weasley girl, as Lucius had considered all but inevitable (although, to be fair, the likelihood of that had been based mostly on Draco's reports, and Draco had been wrong about many things concerning Potter). He'd sued the Daily Prophet for spreading stories about him visiting a Mind-Healer and won. He'd become interested in esoteric magic, if the rumors Lucius had heard floating around Knockturn Alley were correct.

It was probably the last that had brought Potter to him. And why not? Everything seemed to return to Knockturn Alley. Lucius's determination to find a magical way of restoring the Malfoy fortune had cost him his marriage. Narcissa still loved him, she'd said, but she didn't love him enough to stay with him while he forged ahead in Dark Arts.

"Mr. Malfoy?"

Lucius supposed it had been rather a long time since he'd spoken. Rather a long time since the elves had brought the mulled wine and lit the fire, in fact. He summoned a small smile. "What have you come to ask for my help with, Mr. Potter?"

"The Ritual of Bone and Soul."

Lucius was master enough of himself to keep from dropping the wine, but only just. He set the glass on the table beside him and stared at Potter. Potter just kept staring back, although a slight flush had mounted to his cheeks. Lucius was beginning to think that the way he'd blushed when Lucius opened the door didn't relate to the cold.

"What?" he whispered. "Do you know what it involves? That it often takes the caster's soul?"

"Oh, yes, and it doesn't have to be the caster's soul. I've researched rituals like this extensively for the past eight years." Potter's eyes narrowed, which made the determination in them more noticeable than their striking color, for once. "To find a way to bring my godfather Sirius Black back from the Veil."

Lucius supposed he should have known that. There was no one else Potter could resurrect, given that they would have had bodies buried. "You want to build a body for him. What makes you think you could summon his spirit and keep the price from falling on you?"

"Because I know more about the Veil than anyone outside the Unspeakables." The glitter in Potter's eyes now was sharp and queer. "And I know that if a living being enters it, the soul is instantly reft from the body. But the soul doesn't pass on to another life or become a ghost. It simply drifts forever. That's why it used to be considered a particularly fit punishment for heinous crimes, because the criminals who were punished that way had sacrificed eternity as well as their lives."

Lucius picked the wine back up. He had the feeling he was going to need it. "You need my help hunting down the ingredients."

"Yes." Potter's gaze was direct. "Some of them I can purchase, but others need harvesting, and I don't know enough about the Dark Arts to create the right harvesting procedures. I spent the last eight years studying ritual magic, not curses. And I need someone who is a talented and powerful Dark wizard for the last part of the rite, as well."

"The—sex that infuses the new body with a heartbeat."

"Yes."

Lucius closed his eyes, overwhelmed. "Why would you choose me? Even with Dark Arts expertise a requirement, you could have found someone else you didn't have my history with."

"The history is what I want," Potter said. "I know you won't go to the papers with this because of the debts that your family owes me. And I know that you have the power. And one more reason."

Lucius had to open his eyes, because the silence had fallen again. Potter was gazing at him, but slightly off to the side. No, wait. He was staring at Lucius's left arm.

Lucius swallowed. "You cannot think that this ritual would—use the Dark Mark in any way."

"The Ritual of Bone and Soul calls for the sacrifice of what once held a piece of a Dark Lord's soul," Potter said. "The traditional sacrifice is an artifact or sometimes a dead infant who supposedly was a Dark Lord's reincarnation. I could use the artifact, I suppose, but I would rather not go after the few that might still exist."

Lucius covered his left arm with a trembling hand. It was true that Potter could have offered him few more seductive lures, but he had to speak. "I never had a piece of the Dark Lord's soul in my arm. Otherwise, he would still be alive."

Potter shook his head. "His soul was unstable from the Horcruxes he created, you know that." Lucius was grateful that Potter didn't use the Dark Lord's name. "That means that the piece in his body wouldn't have been able to cling to a body at all, or even possess a living host, if he didn't share links to living bodies with complete or only partially-tattered souls. It was a small piece of each one, so it wouldn't have kept him alive when the Horcruxes were gone unless all the Death Eaters he'd ever Marked were still living. But it can count as a sacrifice for this." He leaned forwards. "I can remove it."

And that was the reason, in the end, that Lucius chose the madness of this path forwards.

"You were willing to come here."

Harry smiled, his eyes focused ahead. Malfoy was walking behind him, the variant of the Lumos Charm they'd both cast on their eyes helping them see in the darkness without alerting their prey by a glow. "Yes."

"You are, perhaps, as mad as I first thought you were."

Harry shrugged. "I'd do anything to bring my godfather back, because he's the only chance I've got at family. Yes, it's a kind of madness."

"I thought that the Weasleys were your family. Of a sort."

Malfoy didn't inflect his voice with as much contempt as he could have, which made Harry relax internally. "They were my family, but they expected me to—mourn and go on. I can't do that. I think I'm messed-up in the head. They grieved their dead brother, their dead son, and they share the experience of it. But no one else mourns Sirius. And I still have nightmares of someone who died in the war every single night."

Malfoy paused behind him for a long moment. Then they continued rustling together down the path into the Forbidden Forest. "That is another explanation for why you didn't marry the Weasley girl."

Harry just nodded, because it had been more than that, but Malfoy wouldn't have any interest in hearing about it. The forest ahead of them abruptly widened out into a clearing, and Harry smiled. "Here we are."

An Acromantula youngster was crouched in front of them, fangs bared. Harry had known one would come hunting. Most of them weren't as smart as Aragog, and would consider humans prey instead of something to be avoided.

"You want me to use the Dark spell, then." Malfoy's voice was only a breath, but Harry heard the sweep of cloth that meant his wand was coming out of his holster.

"Yes." Harry studied the shadows sliding over the giant spider's body as it crept a little towards them. It would assume they couldn't sense it as well as it could sense them. "I'll kill it once you've done that."

Malfoy nodded, or Harry assumed he did. He didn't turn to look. Harry couldn't force himself to take his eyes from the Acromantula, not now. His body was shaking with excitement. This was the second substantial step forwards on the path back to Sirius, after talking to Malfoy.

Malfoy moved forwards to stand next to Harry, and spun his wand. The pattern was blurring even to Harry's enhanced eyes, and he blinked, but didn't look away, as Malfoy incanted, "Falsus unicornis!"

The spell spread out as a rank, dark fog, and flowed over the Acromantula. Harry thought he might have heard a high-pitched shriek from it, but he wasn't sure. In any case, a few seconds later, the shrieking, if it existed, had definitely become a high-pitched neigh. The Acromantula had vanished, and in its place, thrashing around on four legs it was obviously unused to, was a shadow-colored unicorn with a horn that flickered like a shaft of uncertain light.

Harry pointed his wand, and cast the Killing Curse silently. The false unicorn shrieked once more, and died. As it crashed to the ground, the flickering horn solidified, and Harry stepped forwards and used another curse to hack it off at the base.

Malfoy made a gulping sound. Harry knew why. This wouldn't curse them in the same way slaughtering a real unicorn for its blood or horn would have, but to someone who had grown up knowing those tales, the sight of a shining spiral horn gripped in Harry's hand still had to strike hard.

"I thought you said you hadn't made a study of curses."

Harry holstered the singing Elder Wand and shrugged. "Those, I already knew."

The horn felt like a frog in his hand, but it was real enough. Another step taken.

"And we had to come to Knockturn Alley to find this?"

Lucius didn't turn around as he led the way into the alley. Potter's voice was fierce, but at least it was low. People might glance at them and think they were victims, but Lucius carried his wand openly and let his magic play around him in lazy swirls of warm wind. It was unlikely.

"Of course we do. This is the only place in Britain where it's sold, and you know it's vital for the ritual that we buy it, not steal it."

"While cursing the owner."

"Of course." Lucius smiled as the front of Borgin and Burke's appeared in front of him. He had to admit, he would enjoy this more than any of the other harvesting chores they had to undertake. "Follow me, and don't breathe so deeply. Borgin has some traps that propagate via fumes in the air."

Potter snorted, but said nothing as they stepped through the dark, heavy door. An invisible bell jangled overhead, and Borgin limped out from an illusory cavern behind the counter to stare at them.

"What do you want?"

"A giant's Hand of Glory," Lucius said. "I know you have one." He tilted back his hood enough that Borgin could see his face, and watched the disgust and the uneasiness twine together in the man's expression. The people on the Darker side of the law in wizarding Britain never knew what to make of Lucius now, since he still carried the Mark on his arm but had escaped Azkaban without even an Imperius defense the second time.

Borgin, after a moment, decided he cared more about money than anything else, and snorted rudely. "Yeah? You think that I'd sell one of them to you when it would mean getting cursed myself?"

Lucius held back his own scowl. Well, there were few enough rituals that used a Hand of Glory made from a giant; he should have guessed that Borgin would be familiar with this one. He opened his mouth to answer, but Potter stepped past him.

He had let his own magic loose. Lucius found himself staring at the man's back as a great flapping set of black wings seemed to fill the shop. The air turned colder, and frost crept across the floor. Potter held up his hands in front of him, no wand in sight.

There was a brewing globe of darkness between them, which resembled a tarnished crystal ball. Potter held it out towards Borgin.

"Look at this, and see your fate if you don't submit to selling us the giant's Hand and the curse," he said softly. "I promise, the curse is better."

Borgin opened his mouth and then froze. Lucius could still see nothing except the moving darkness from where he stood behind Potter, but obviously Borgin could see more than that. He began to gibber, very softly at first, and then louder. At last he was screaming, foam breaking from his jaws.

"No more! No more!" he wailed.

Lucius was about to intervene, fearing that Potter might drive Borgin mad, and then it would be impossible to fulfill the harvest—the owner had to consciously accept money for the Hand of Glory—when Potter nodded and dropped his hands. The darkness wisped away into nothingness and the frost melted. "Very well. Sell it to us."

Borgin scuttled into the cavern he'd emerged from and came back dragging what looked like an enormous lump of half-melted wax. Lucius wrinkled his nose as the distinct smell of giant came to him, but waited until Potter had handed Borgin the thousand Galleons required before he lifted his wand.

He cursed Borgin with a year of nightmares. From the way Borgin shuddered and bowed his head, he probably expected to relive whatever Potter had shown him, but that still seemed to best actually living through it for him.

Lucius waited until Potter had shrunken the hand and they were outside the shop before he asked, "What did you show him?"

Potter glanced at him. "His fate."

"You said you didn't know the Dark Arts…"

"And I said I spent eight years studying ritual magic. Besides, not all the stories spread about me after the war were false."

It took Lucius another thirty steps to remember what stories those must be, and then he had to force himself to keep walking and not just gape at Potter's back.

Master of Death.

He shivered, and kept moving, glad he was on Potter's side both literally and metaphorically.

"We should discuss the sexual part of the ritual."

Harry opened his eyes. He'd been sitting in meditation before the fire in Malfoy's largest sitting room. But meditation was something he had practiced for eight years, and he could always go back to it later. "All right," he agreed, turning on the layered rug to look at Malfoy.

The man paused, for some reason, in the middle of a step. He stared down at Harry where he sat. Harry raised his eyebrows. Sometimes when he meditated he swooped among strange thoughts. Maybe he'd been wearing a hostile expression or a weird one, despite how he'd felt.

"You are not—worried about this?" Malfoy's voice was as hesitant as his steps, but at least he walked around Harry and sat down in a chair not far from the fire.

Harry bit back harsh amusement. He shrugged. "I'm worried that the ritual won't go well. I'm worried that we might mess up in the ways we need to harvest ingredients and have to start over. I'm worried that I might not see Sirius again. But about having sex in a ritual context? No."

"You have had sex in a ritual context before?"

"No."

Malfoy frowned, which marred his face like a crack in porcelain. His face was made for sneers and scowls, Harry thought absently, not frowns of concern. "Then we must discuss it. You will not be expecting—the intensity."

"I think I know how intense ritual magic can get," Harry said. Let Malfoy take what warning he would from the quietness of his voice. Harry wasn't as experienced as Malfoy—he couldn't be, not given how much longer Malfoy had lived and his intimate familiarity with Dark Arts—but he had participated in rituals as well as studying them. "And besides, it's going to be different because we're not creating sex magic with this ritual."

Malfoy paused. "Yes, we are. That is the sort of misconception we should—"

"I mean that the primary purpose of the ritual isn't some kind of conception or sexual enhancement." Harry eased impatience out of his voice by picturing Sirius in front of him, and what it would be like when he had his godfather back, and all his irritation would drain and vanish. "The sex is a tool, like the Hand of Glory. My focus, and yours, should be elsewhere."

"A mature way of looking at it."

"Thank you."

"But a cold one."

Harry shrugged. "I want my godfather back more than I want anything else in life, Mr. Malfoy. I know that you probably don't want your Mark gone more than you want anything else in life, but you're participating as if that's true. Keep your focus on that, please. Don't worry about me."

"If you are going to be on top, then perhaps—" Malfoy trailed off, no doubt because of the way Harry was staring at him. "What?"

"Don't worry, I'm annoyed at myself and not you," Harry said, shaking his head when he saw Malfoy begin to indignantly form the word worried with his mouth. "I really did forget that I hadn't told you about one of the sacrifices in the ritual."

"Ritual magic that includes sacrifices is something you have no experience in."

"You're mistaken," was all Harry said, but Malfoy snapped to attention. "And in this case, I'm not planning to sacrifice a human or an animal. I'm a virgin, Mr. Malfoy. That's what I'll be laying on the altar. And you know very well that in the deflowering of a virgin, the virgin has to be the one getting penetrated."

Malfoy held still for a long moment. Harry was somewhat entertained to see the cavalcade of expressions that passed across his face, but he was also still deeply annoyed with himself for never thinking to tell Malfoy that he was a virgin and of course would bottom. It wasn't the kind of thing that should have been missed. It wouldn't alter the outline of the ritual Harry held in his head, because he'd known it all along, but it could mess with Malfoy's concentration.

What Malfoy said, for some reason, was, "You're twenty-six years old."

"That doesn't age me out of the ritual requirements."

"I—did not mean that. I mean that I would have expected to lose your virginity long before this. Draco certainly did."

Harry arched his eyebrows. "Maybe you shouldn't be thinking of me as your son."

Malfoy's face flushed such a deep red that Harry was sure it was the end of the conversation, and it turned out to be. Harry closed his eyes to return to his meditation, but he did add, "I've looked up pain-relieving charms and lubrication charms. Don't worry about it."

Malfoy thumped out of the room and closed the door. Harry half-shrugged and concentrated again. He had to be able to lower his mind to the precise calm depth required by the ritual, and to do it instantly. As experienced as he was in meditation, that still required practice.

Getting Sirius back was all that mattered.